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Dessert

Steamed Pudding

A steamed pudding made with sour milk, sugar, raisins, currants, butter, bread crumbs, baking soda, eggs, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Steamed Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix sour milk, sugar, raisins, currants, butter, bread crumbs, baking soda, and eggs until well combined.

  2. Add flour gradually until the mixture thickens to a batter consistency.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Cover the mold with a lid or foil.

  3. Steam for 3 hours until cooked through.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda so the pudding rises and turns tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to release gas, lightening the dense batter.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during steaming to give the pudding its structure.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a moist, tender crumb.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and add body, giving the pudding a soft, cake-like texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the pudding moist.

The step that matters

Adding the flour gradually. Flour is added until the mixture reaches batter consistency. Adding it all at once can create lumps and an uneven, heavy texture, so it is folded in slowly while checking thickness.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, raisin, butter, bread, egg, flour):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, raisin, butter, bread, egg, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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